A different kind of post today, inspired by the weather and the time to let my mind wander…

‘It’s the first warm evening of the year. A surprisingly hot spring day hazes into a cobalt blue evening. The first stars twinkle through the outstretched arms of the garden trees and I find myself drawn outside.
I take a seat on my back step and gradually dissolve into the evening. I let sight and sound wash over me, not reaching or holding, just being.
Slowly the tiny sounds of the evening city separate from the background white noise of London traffic. Sirens wail in the distance and air brakes suddenly screech on a nearby road. A chink of plates comes from the house opposite, higher than expected. Third floor washing up. Every so often there is the sound of running water by my feet and I realise this is water from neighbour’s houses, sluicing through the subterranean tunnel under my garden.
The back door of the house to the right clicks open and almost immediately I smell cigarette smoke and hear the burbling of the television. Something else too, a faint stale smell, un-aired rooms and domesticity.
Next to me my cat shifts slightly and the bell around her neck chinks gently. She stares at me for a while but then settles back down. She understands this silent observation. We watch the darkening garden together.
Suddenly there is rustling in the foliage. Small things move, surprisingly loud in this intimate space. Mice, frogs, snails, I’m not sure. My cat would know.
The woman next door coughs softly.
The stars grow steadily brighter and a blackbird trills it’s sweet liquid song into the night. Planes cross overhead and the traffic continues to rumble. Sitting close to the floor I feel safe, secure, enfolded by garden, trees and houses. The domestic lives of a million people wash over and me and it is strangely peaceful. My cat and I watch a light switch on in a window opposite as a satellite tracks overhead’.